


Pièce Montée

by jelenedra



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Beverly Katz Is The Greatest BTW, Blood, Case Fic, Crime Scenes, Episode Style, Escape, F/F, Implied Hannibal Shenanigans, M/M, Murder, Psychological Assessment, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Slash, Violence, hannibal cannot be trusted to choose his own entertainment, hannibal is the worst at helping, no hannibal stop poking the killers you already know what they'll do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelenedra/pseuds/jelenedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>pièce montée</i>: a confectionary centrepiece, wholly decorative and not intended for consumption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pièce Montée

Will supposes he shouldn’t be surprised at Hannibal’s invitation; the good doctor has always struck him as being tangled around the issues of fairness and balance and quid pro quo. Ever since they caught Silvestre he’s been a little off, a little reserved. 

Today they are assisting in one of the Bureau’s never-ending projects to update the profile database. Hannibal is calm and collected and whatever that sticking point was, Will sees no sign of it today.

He’s a little surprised when they arrive at the women’s prison.

“Aside from a risk assessment when she was brought in, the lady we are visiting has never been examined,” Hannibal says as they wait for security to check their ID. His voice, as always, is perfectly measured. Will still can’t figure the accent out, but it’s stopped bothering him. “She pleaded guilty immediately on being caught, and subsequently received several life sentences. No analysis required.” 

_Helen Riley_ , Will thinks. Then he says it.

“You remember her.” Hannibal looks pleased. “The FBI call her a serial killer, but her pattern was more of a _spree_.”

“A rampage,” Will mutters. “Did they ever find a motive?”

\- 

“I like killing,” Riley says. She’s as well-groomed as Will has ever seen a prisoner; hair long and sleek, pulled neatly back, no dirt under her nails. Tattooed flowers in pink and green and yellow peek out from her collar and wind their way up her long white neck. They clash horribly with the orange jump suit. “It’s like eating Pringles, or losing your virginity. Once you pop you can’t stop.”

“When did that start for you?” Hannibal asks. If it wasn’t for the duress alarms they’re both wearing and the heavy steel bolts holding the chairs and table to the floor this could be any kind of normal conversation. Assuming normal people have conversations about murder. Will rubs the corner of his eye with a fingertip.

Riley lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug. She’s very elegant, very controlled. Will thinks about what it might be like, to be the meanest predator in the room and absolutely assured of it. 

“One of the boys from Siti’s mosque came to my house and made some threats, so I stabbed him.” She flashes a sweet little aren’t-I-a-naughty-girl smile.

Will can picture it in his mind—Riley, home alone, with nothing but a kitchen knife. The subtle perceptual shift from victim to defender to holding life and death in her hands. 

Hannibal keeps questioning and Riley keeps answering, but Will is caught up in the feeling of blood spilling over his hands. Riley is tall and strong, it would have been nothing for her to catch the man— _Fariz Kassem_ , he remembers from the news—and then help him inside the house, her poor fainting neighbour. She’d ripped him apart, almost entirely with her bare hands. She’d had a lot of rage in her. 

The brief press of Hannibal’s fingers to his wrist catches his attention. 

“So you would be amenable to the assessment?”

“Sure,” says Riley. She smiles wide. “Let’s see what you have.”

-

Will wakes, shuddering and unable to tolerate the texture of his sheets any more. 

-

Things are quiet. Will lectures on interracial violence and the common personality disorders. Jack does not call. On Thursday Beverly brings him a plate of custard tarts and stays, needling him, until he’s eaten three. She makes ten baking puns in under a minute and when she leaves Will feels lighter than he has in a week.

He and Hannibal return to the prison exactly one week after their first visit. 

When they see Riley she looks _broken._ Her hair is still pulled back, but dirty. Her face is bruised and there are little traces of blood stuck to her cuticles. She hunches away from them. Given a pen, she fills out a clinical inventory with brisk efficiency, but when Hannibal starts asking questions she just curls tighter around herself and glares at him. 

Hannibal goes cold as soon as it becomes apparent that Riley is feeling reticent. Will picks at the contrast between them. Hannibal European, Riley a born New Yorker, even transplanted like this; Hannibal’s suit, Riley’s jumpsuit; Hannibal’s stillness, Riley now pacing, now picking at her fingers, now—slamming her fist into the table. 

“Nothing _happened_ ,” she grinds out, lips curling back from clenched teeth. “Nothing _happened to me_ , you slimy fuck. I happened!”

“Helen—” 

“No. Shut up.” 

Will has never seen anyone tell Hannibal to shut up before. The doctor’s face hardens, just a little. 

“You can’t reduce me to a set of influences; you can’t replace good and evil with behaviourism! Stop trying to put me in a fucking, a fucking moral nappy, stop acting like it’s not my fault. And you! You can’t even look me in the fucking eye, can you?” Will can’t, as it happens, but probably not for the reason Riley thinks. “Look at me, shit for brains, can you even stand to call me evil? Am I evil? Am I? _Am I?_ ”

Riley’s shouting attracts the guards. They enter, swift and efficient, and cuff her hands behind her back. She subsides the second they do, lets them walk her quietly out into the hall.

“She wanted it to go like that,” Will says, quiet and certain. 

Hannibal’s face is still and cold. After a moment he rises, and Will follows him out. 

“You have problems with Riley?” the guard guiding them says. “Sorry, man. She had a death in the family or something.”

-

Freddie Lounds has written extensively about the death of Siti Nasralleh; it’s not the main feature on tattlecrime.com, but it’s linked in the side bar with a picture of Helen Riley below it. WHO KILLED THIS KILLER’S GIRLFRIEND? screams the headline. Will hopes to God Freddie didn’t produce that herself; if she did he has vastly underestimated her wit. 

Siti Nasralleh saw her girlfriend in jail every week like clockwork for three solid years, even up to the day before she died. Her mosque was known to be progressive by the community, and she had an excellent education, but she still had a hard time finding work after Riley’s arrest. Freddie Lounds provides pictures of the crime scene, but not the body—that, she lovingly describes. She speculates on the possibility of an honour killing, but only as a foot note. 

Will slaps his laptop shut and gets back to work. 

\- 

Much to everyone’s surprise, Riley is allowed to leave prison to attend the funeral. Freddie speculates about this, as well. Riley only ever killed men, and has been perfectly behaved throughout her first three years in jail. 

Will thinks of Doctor Gideon, and frowns. 

-

Riley escapes, leaving two unconscious deputies behind her.

-

Will sees Hannibal that afternoon. The good doctor is tense, in some way Will can’t quite put his finger on. Sometimes not being able to read Hannibal so easily is a relief, but today all he can find is frustration. 

“Do they know how she escaped?”

Will sinks deeper into the plush leather chair and frowns. “She would’ve been in handcuffs the whole time. With two deputies. She must’ve waited for them to slip up and picked the lock.”

“How did she get a lock pick?” 

Will shrugs. “If she had access to any kind of thin metal object she could have improvised something. Maybe a pen. Only if she had access to it while she was in prison, though, or she wouldn’t have had the time.” 

Hannibal watches him. In the low lighting his eyes seem sunken into blackness, with only a faint reflection to remind Will where they are. It’s easier to meet them like this. 

“If she kills again,” Will says, each word falling into him like a stone into water, “Jack’s going to call me in.” 

Exactly on cue, his phone rings. 

-

_Malik Azizan had been alone in his house when the power went out._

_He’d gotten up, fumbling through his darkened office towards the door. He’d been in the foyer when he’d heard a noise behind him and turned. He’d seen Riley, standing there, pale as a ghost._

_They’d talked, for a while. He’d gone to his knees at one point. Begged her to believe him, maybe._

_Riley had taken his chin in her hand, a grip hard enough that the bruising had kept developing post-mortem. Dragged him back to his feet, maybe. Staring into his eyes, looking for the truth._

_“I didn’t kill her.”_

_“I believe you,” Riley said at last, releasing him. She let him stagger away and faded back into the darkness._

_He’d turned, hands braced on a side table, breathing in harsh pants that fogged the polished wood._

_He’d never heard the pad of bare feet on carpet behind him._

_“But since I’m here anyway,” said Riley, and slit his throat from ear to ear._

-

Will comes back to himself 

“Did you really need me for this?”

“Yes,” Jack says peaceably. 

This is a lie. They have long brown hairs caught on a tree out by the fuse box, and a set of prints across Azizan’s face that Jimmy had called “gorgeous”, and they didn’t need those either. Riley had dipped her fingers into the spreading pool of blood and painted _Helen was here 2013_ across the wall. 

-

Will wakes in the night to one of his dogs licking at his fingers and Helen Riley perched at the end of his bed. 

He’s pretty sure this is a dream. 

“Do you know who killed Siti?” Riley sounds like someone caved in her ribcage, breathless, desperate. Heartbroken. Will struggles up onto his elbows. 

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“They say you’re some kind of genius.” Riley shifts slightly. Her hand is resting on Winston’s head. “Can’t you figure it out?”

“I…” Will thinks back to tattlecrime.com, Freddie’s ghastly little article. Freddie’s been many terrible things, but lurid language aside, she’s pretty accurate with her corpses. “I would say… male, her age. Probably someone she was close to, maybe a co-worker. If she mentioned someone who’d been giving her trouble, that would be your first stop.” He scrubs at his eyes. “Definitely not an honour killing. 

Riley tilts her head to one side. “I knew it wasn’t an honour killing. The only person who might have done that was dear old uncle Malik, and he said he didn’t.”

“But you killed him anyway,” Will points out. 

“Did you not hear me? He was the kind of asshole who might have gone out killing girls for honour. Of course I killed him.”

It occurs to Will that Riley might try to kill him. When he asks her about this, she laughs. “Nah, you seem okay. I’ll leave you be. If you try to stop me, though, I might have to visit Doctor Lecter.”

Will’s blood goes cold. He is suddenly, crushingly sure that he is awake. “You seemed to like him, though.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Riley smiles like a shark. “Lecter, man… I like him fine, but look him in the eye someday. I could cut his throat and roll around in the blood and not feel even a little bit bad.”

“Well you are a spree killer,” Will says reasonably.

Riley laughs again. She reaches up and pats his cheek. “Don’t fret, little boy, I’ll make things right. Go back to sleep.” 

Will waits until he hears his window open and close, and then waits some more. When he’s very, very sure that Riley is gone, he picks up his phone and dials. 

-

Beverly laughs for nearly a full minute when Will describes their conversation. It seems to break the miasma hanging over the house.

Hannibal, on the phone, is less amused. His voice doesn’t actually sound any different, but Will’s pretty sure what he’s hearing is fury. 

-

“You are surprisingly hale, considering you had a killer in your home.” 

Hannibal’s face is the carefully blank expression Will has started to call _therapy-mode_ , if only in the privacy of his own head.

“She was in my head before she was in my home,” Will says, neutral as he can be. “That was worse, honestly.” 

“You have a very cavalier attitude towards your own safety, Will.”

“I’m more likely to end up in a mental hospital than the other kind,” Will says absently, before Hannibal’s tone catches up with him. “Are—are you angry with me?”

Hannibal says nothing, but something has shifted. Will finally manages to meet his eyes and finds the answer before him. In retrospect he should have figured this out, standing outside an ambulance, watching Hannibal save a life.

He’s not entirely sure how to react. 

Hannibal raises an eyebrow. “Will?”

Will feels his cheeks heat up. “I, uh.” He drops his head and clears his throat. “I didn’t realise you… had… that feeling. For me.”

Hannibal’s silence takes on a distinctly amused quality. Will pushes his hands through his hair. He’s not good with feelings, not when they come from people who are alive. The weight of Hannibal’s regard could crush him. 

The chair opposite creaks a little as Hannibal stands. Will pulls his glasses off with his right hand and covers his eyes with the palm of his left. 

“Will,” Hannibal says, gentler this time, and brushes warm fingers over Will’s chin. Will remembers Malik Azizan’s corpse, finger-shaped bruises blooming over his jaw. He uncovers his eyes before the memory can become a flashback and finds himself staring at Hannibal’s mouth. 

“Does this make you uncomfortable?” Hannibal’s voice hits all the notes of clinical dryness, but there’s humour there too. His fingers have strayed to Will’s throat; when Will swallows they press lightly on his Adam’s apple.

Will manages to choke out the word, “No.” 

Hannibal leans in and brushes a single, perfectly chaste kiss across his lips. 

-

Riley calls Jack Crawford’s phone, gives him an address, and hangs up. They arrive with a full SWAT team, but don’t need it. When they burst in through the doors she’s already kneeling with her hands on her head. 

“It’s okay,” she says serenely. “I’m done now.” 

She stays, handcuffed and under guard, while Will examines the crime scene.

It’s brilliantly sunny out, and Riley seems different. Aside from a splash of blood that hit her in the throat and dripped down over her collarbones, she’s barely touched; still in the dress she wore to the funeral, hair dirty and falling round her face, utterly peaceful and still. Will thinks of _purification_.

The apartment is small and messy, but light streams in through the windows and bathes the whole room in gold. The bloody mess in the centre of the bed seems to gleam. Forensics suspects, and Riley confirms, that the body belongs to Paul Hayes. He’d rented the apartment. Local police had interviewed him in relation to Siti Nasrellah’s death, but there had been nothing placing him at the scene. 

Beverly nudges Will’s shoulder with hers. “This’d be a great time to see how accurate your empathing is.”

“My _what?_ ” Will gets what she means, though; and when Jack overhears them it becomes a moot point. Will sighs and squeezes the bridge of his nose.

-

_Riley had been prepared to kick in the door, but she hadn’t had to; Hayes had left the louvers next to his front door open, and all she had to do was slip her hand through and turn the deadbolt. She was barefoot, rolling her feet from outside to in to keep her steps silent._

_When she’d started tearing up his clothes, Hayes had rolled over in his sleep, but hadn’t woken. She tied his feet, first, since they were conveniently positioned. When she grabbed his wrist he did wake, but she slammed her knee into his nose and he flinched away. She tied each wrist, too, then kicked him hard in the ribs._

_It didn’t take long for him to confess everything, begging for clemency; he hadn’t known Siti belonged to her, if he had he would have never—_

_“So if she hadn’t belonged to me, killing her would have been fine?” Riley said sweetly, and broke his left fingers, one-two-three-four. Then she dislocated his thumb._

_Everything she’d ever felt was like a striking match in comparison. Her rage rose slow and heavy like a kraken from the sea, pressing out through all her limbs. She punished him by layers, and when the moment was right, she smashed the bathroom mirror and used a shard of glass to open him from sternum to scrotum._

-

“There was a lot more swearing involved,” Riley says. “Also some crying. But yes, that’s about right.”

-

Jack summons Hannibal, as well—forensics has rightly pointed out that such a radical behaviour change makes her a suicide risk, and Alana isn’t answering her phone. The good doctor greets Will by brushing two knuckles over the inside of his wrist. Beverly waggles her eyebrows and slides away from them. Riley wolf whistles, but the agent keeping a grip on her handcuffs doesn’t leave, and so neither can she. 

“Not much of a rampage,” Hannibal notes.

“Before you get all judgey-judgey,” Riley says sweetly, “please do remember that I’ve seen your basement.” 

Hannibal gives her a look that might make Will wither and die if it was directed at him. 

-

Once Hannibal has declared her no danger to herself, Riley is sent back to prison. 

“Four counts of breaking and entering, two counts of assault resulting in bodily harm, two counts of murder, and I can’t remember what the charge is but it is illegal to escape custody.” Beverly offers Will her sack of pretzels. “Not bad. She was only out for what, three days? Four?”

Will accepts a pretzel. He’s fairly sure he doesn’t actually need to contribute to this conversation. 

“But hey, what was that with Lecter?” Beverly waggles her eyebrows some more. Will feels his face heat up, and sees Hannibal appear quietly over Beverly’s shoulder.

“What was what?” The good doctor’s tone is perfectly polite. 

Beverly’s startle is so exaggerated that she nearly loses the pretzels. Will smirks, just a little, and doesn’t flinch when Hannibal rests a palm on his shoulder. 

\- 

The office feels warmer than usual, but Will is aware enough to realise it might just be his own nerves.

The door opens. 

“Will.” Hannibal smiles. “Come in.”

Will is intensely aware of Hannibal’s eyes tracing over his throat, his wrists, every scrap of exposed skin. He thinks, unaccountably, of Riley’s midnight visit. 

When Hannibal steps back to let him pass, Will turns in towards him, brings up a hand to rest lightly at the knot of Hannibal’s tie. Hannibal stills. Will traces Hannibal's veins, turns his hand sideways to cover the whole of his throat, runs the very tips of his fingers from chin to collarbone. 

Hannibal closes the door. His hands are large and blisteringly hot when they slide to the small of Will’s back, under his coat but over his shirt. 

Will breathes in the scent of Hannibal’s skin and sighs out against his neck, “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“For what it’s worth,” says Hannibal, “you are in good company.”


End file.
